On Generic Management in Health Care: Hospital Chief Information Officers (CIOs) Say Patient Engagement is All About ... Themselves?

To laugh or to cry? - now it seems that hospital CIOs think they "own" patient engagement. 

An article in Medscape summarized a presentation at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Annual meeting that provided a surprising insight into how some hospital managers think.  The survey focused on the concept of patient engagement:

In separate surveys, researchers polled a national sample of 125 chief information officers, 359 primary care physicians, and 2567 patients who visited their doctor in the previous 90 days. Questions centered on beliefs about engagement, the perceived roles of the stakeholders, and barriers.

The patients seemed to have a sensible idea about their own engagement,

From the patient perspective, getting help from a provider they trust is most important, said Mazi Rasulnia, PhD, from M Consulting LLC, who is cofounder of Pack Health, a patient-activation company in Birmingham, Alabama.

What they expect most, according to the survey, is a provider who listens to them and helps them understand treatment options before they make a decision.

'Patients want questions answered around the specificity of their own health, not just what generally happens with 'patients like you' or from a population standpoint,' Dr Rasulnia said.

'What they don't really care for or expect is for providers to 'give me a website so I can access my medical information'.' That, and asking patients about their personal life, ranked lowest on patients' lists of expectations.

They want providers to help them navigate not only their disease, but also the health system. Providing access is important, but that alone won't help patients engage, he explained.

The article did not provide much information about the physicians' responses, but did suggest

When physicians talk about patient engagement, they tend to think in terms of the doctor–patient relationship,...

So in general, the doctors and patients were on the same page, but

doctors believe patients need to take more responsibility for their outcomes, and patients say they can't because their doctors, who are responsible for engaging them, don't spend enough time with them.

Setting aside the causes and approaches to the problem of insufficient time during patient encounters, the chief information officers (CIOs), had a radically different idea,

when healthcare executives talk about the patient engagement envisioned under the Affordable Care Act, they think in terms of transactions,...

Furthermore,

 Chief information officers believe they are responsible because patient engagement involves technology,...

Also,

The chief information officers surveyed 'clearly saw themselves as the owners of patient engagement,' said Lorren Pettit, MBA, vice president of market research for HIMSS Analytics, who reported on the systems perspective.

When chief information officers were asked who is most accountable for patient engagement in their organizations, 46.4% said they were, but 14.4% thought nurses were accountable for patient engagement, not physicians or patients.

Comment - on the Hubris of Generic Managers

I have to assume that the article, presentation, or the survey were hopelessly garbled. If not, what on earth were the chief information officers thinking?

Chief information officers think they are the "owners of patient engagement?"  While "patient engagement" does not seem to be a well-defined term (look here), and seems like an example of bureaucrat speak or politically correctness, it surely seems to be related to communication between patients and health care professionals.  It surely does not seem to be directly about information technology. At best, the health care information technology CIOs manage could support patient engagement.    Furthermore, the explanation apparently offered by the CIOs, that patient engagement involves technology, is not helpful because at this time, all of medicine and health care to some extent "involves technology."

So why would CIOs claim to "own" patient engagement?  Maybe they are simply clueless about what patient engagement really involves.  CIOs rarely interact with patients.  Most CIOs have no direct health care experience, and are not trained as doctors or nurses.  For example, a recent list of "100 Hospital and Health System CIOs to Know" included only 10 with health professional degrees (seven MDs, three RNs).

Why then, not simply admit that the issue is out of their area of expertise, rather than claiming "ownership."  My best guess is this is the bravado, or arrogance of generic managers.

In 1988, Alain Enthoven advocated in Theory and Practice of Managed Competition in Health Care Finance, a book published in the Netherlands, that to decrease health care costs it would be necessary to break up the "physicians' guild" and replace leadership by clinicians with leadership by managers (see 2006 post here). Thus from 1983 to 2000, the number of managers working in the US health care system grew 726%, while the number of physicians grew 39%, so the manager/physician ratio went from roughly one to six to one to one (see 2005 post here). As we noted here, the growth continued, so there are now 10 managers for every US physician.

The managers who first took over health care may have had some health care background.  Now it seems that health care managers are decreasingly likely to have any health care background, and increasingly likely to be from the world of finance.  Meanwhile, for a long time, business schools and the like seem to have teaching managers that they have a God given right to manage every organization and every aspect of society, regardless how little they know about what the particular context, business, calling, etc involves.  Presumably this is based on a faith or ideology that modern management tools are universally applicable and nigh onto supernatural in their powers.  Of course, there is not much evidence to support this, especially in health care.

We have discussed other examples of bizarre proclamations by generic managers and their supporters that seem to corroborate their belief in such divine powers.  Most recently, there was the multimillionaire hospital system CEO who proclaimed new artificial intelligence technology could replace doctors in short order (look here).   Top hospital managers are regularly lauded as "brilliant," or "extraordinary," often in terms of their managerial skills (look here), but at times because of their supposed ownership of all aspects of patient care, e.g., (look here)

They literally are on call 24/7, 365 days a year and they are running an institution where lives are at stake....

If hospital CEOs, who spend lots of time in offices, at meetings, and raising money, really see themselves as perpetually on call, and directly responsible for patients' lives, then maybe it's not surprising that their CIOs think they own patient engagment.

So in summary this latest survey shows the continued hubris of the generic manager, and hence their continued unsuitability to run health care organizations.  It is time for health care professionals to take back health care from generic managers.  True health care reform would restore leadership by people who understand the health care context, uphold health professionals' values, are willing to be held accountable, and put patients' and the public's health ahead of self-interest. 

ADDENDUM (20 April, 2015) - This post was republished on Naked Capitalism.